A variety of portable consumer devices, typically called payment cards, can be purchased by a first entity (the “card purchaser” or “card source”) for the benefit of a second entity (the “cardholder”) and loaded with a desired amount of money thereon. The card is associated with a cardholder account against which the cardholder can accumulate charges from purchase transactions and make payments. The card purchaser can then have the payment card mailed to the cardholder. Such payment cards are often referred to as prepaid cards or debit cards. In a company-sponsored program, the card purchaser may be the employer of the cardholder. Credit cards are another well-known form of payment card, comprising portable consumer devices that can be used for payment. Credit cards are associated with a cardholder account against which the cardholder can accumulate charges from purchase transactions and make payments.
Conventionally, these payment cards are mailed to the respective cardholder via regular mail, such as through the U.S. Postal Service so the cards are physically received by the cardholder. If the cardholder changes his or her mailing address before receipt, the mailed payment card may not reach the cardholder and instead may be returned by the Postal Service due to the old or invalid mailing address. The sender (i.e., card source) to whom the payment card is returned may comprise the issuing bank, the payment card company, the cardholder's employer, or some other card administration system associated with the payment card.
When a payment card is returned, the card number associated with the payment card is entered into data records of a card processing system. The system determines if the payment card that has been returned is an upgraded card (i.e., a card that is pending activation). If so, the system will force the activation of the upgraded card and then it will change the payment card status to “Returned”. The returned payment card is kept for a time to await re-sending or, eventually, to be destroyed. The activation of the upgraded card forces the status of the payment card currently in possession of the cardholder to be “inactive”. Because the cardholder's current payment card is not active anymore, that payment card can no longer be used. That is, at approximately the moment the cardholder's current payment card is set to “inactive”, that card cannot be used. Such a situation can be a great inconvenience to the cardholder and may occur with no warning. A similar situation exists for cards associated with new accounts, though the results are not as severe, because the inactive status occurs before the cardholder obtains possession of a payment card.
In addition, returned payment cards cause a large overhead because of the need to securely store the returned payment cards pending resolution of their status before they are destroyed. The payment cards must be retrieved from the secure storage to be re-mailed to an updated mailing address or to be destroyed. Moreover, it can be difficult to have prompt communication between the cardholder and the card source or card administration system as to when a payment card has been returned and what the updated mailing address data should be, further complicating the re-mailing process and delaying when the destruction of returned payment cards may take place.
What is needed is an improved technique for handling returned payment cards to reduce inconvenience to cardholders, reduce overhead to card sources, and ensure continued service with current cardholder information.